


that i am left with these aching bones

by stormwarnings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Multi, Post-Canon Events, Valinor times, eldritch peredhil ish, mentions of past violence, mostly just rambling between two lost souls, of learning forgiveness and discussing the truth of history, post-fall of gondolin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28076853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormwarnings/pseuds/stormwarnings
Summary: Love, Elwing means, is not synonymous with forgiveness.Love, Maeglin means, hurts every day, every time, in different ways.(You didn’t really think Elwing spent all that time in a high and sorrowful sea tower alone, estranged from her people and left family-less because of her family, did you?)
Relationships: Elwing (Tolkien) & Maeglin | Lómion
Comments: 15
Kudos: 51
Collections: Tolkien Secret Santa 2020





	that i am left with these aching bones

**Author's Note:**

> this is for the tolkien secret santa 2020! im hoping my giftee enjoys all 4k of rambling, and that you the reader do too :) I created a whole new relationship tag (elwing & maeglin) for this one :))

It does not, of course, escape Maeglin’s attention that he now has what might, in a better world, be called a _neighbor_. Nor does it escape his attention that the aforementioned neighbor is none other than the half-elven wife of his cousin’s son (far estranged that they are). But this puts one of his (albeit distantly related) family members closer than any have been in a few decades, and Maeglin is not entirely sure how he feels about this.

This is a lie. Maeglin is absolutely terrified by this. He supposes, though, that their stormy shores, far north of what would be considered civilization, are not exactly teeming with people. They will, at some point, run into each other, and Maeglin thinks he would like to do this on his own terms. He will forever be paying for his mistakes, he knows. That does not mean he must stop facing them.

The tower – the lighthouse – looks lonely and silver, though that is perhaps the starkness of it against the clouded skies and the crashing sea. As Maeglin knocks, he muses on the sea, that fickle lady. He had never known the sea, until he was reborn here. She roars and washes against the rocks, against the cliff, and the cries of the gulls above are harsh and mourning and alive.

“Ah,” Elwing says, when she answers the door. It is not a greeting.

They look each other over. Maeglin knows what she sees. He is too thin, Olórin claims. He is middling-skinned and ever-frowning, and his jet hair is a rather in-between texture that frizzes in the humidity yet refuses to take to the many braids his mother had been fond of, and he is bony and sharp-eyed. He does, in general, look even worse than the stories told. Maeglin has never really had time for false vanity, especially not now.

“Well,” Elwing says, and her voice is so very blunt that Maeglin is yanked out of his pity. “I did not think any could look unhealthy, in these lands, nor less than perfect. I suppose, then, you are forever proving others wrong.”

Maeglin inclines his head. He recognizes her self-deprecation, in the words, and can understand it, in a way. She is ever so very mannish, with her sad eyes and her untamable black hair, and the feathery edges to her stocky build that are something much more like a maia than like anything else. She wears a lovely dress, too, all Noldor stitchwork and finery, but she looks lost in it.

She looks, he thinks, lost.

“I was hoping,” Elwing says, “that you would be my mother-in-law.”

“I am sorry to disappoint,” Maeglin replies.

There’s a razorlike twist to Elwing’s mouth. “No, you’re not.”

This is neither here nor there. Maeglin holds up his basket like a peace offering. Surprisingly, Elwing takes it.

“Well,” she says, and glances out at the roiling sky. She did, he knows, grow up by the sea. This is his fault but somehow, he thinks, it is not the worst thing that he has done to her. Its storminess reflects in her silver eyes, and its broken edges look calming to her. “You might as well come in then.”

The inside of the tower is rather tight, rooms fading into each other and staircases winding forever up. There are big windows, though, and a large fire, and dried herbs hanging from the ceiling of the kitchen. It is not as cramped as the place that Maeglin grew up in. It is not at all open compared to the ostentatious pinnacles of Gondolin. He does not say any of this. Maeglin does not say much, not anymore.

“Well,” Elwing says again. “Take a seat, will you.”

He does. It is a relief to be off his feet. That is, he thinks, one of those things. He did not know much when he was brought back, when he was reborn from Mandos, but now he does. He knows, in a way, that many are reborn without their scars; reborn into the happiness and gleaming lives that they lived in their best times, which for many was the days before the flight of the Noldor across the sea. Reborn into the bodies that were most them, the bodies which they deserved to have them back. Yet Maeglin was returned with the scars he earned during battle, with old and toughened skin crisscrossing his back from the whippings of Angband. He was returned from the Halls with a leg that always tells him when the rain is coming, and a body that will, he thinks, never stop aching. Never stop hurting. Never stop reminding him of the torture, and of what it wrought.

He wonders, then, what that says about him. That his time in Angband was when he was, evidently, most himself. That even Badhron the Judge cannot forgive him.

“You are quiet,” Elwing tells him. She sweeps around her kitchen as if she has to move, else she will fall apart. It is rather manic. It is rather curious.

“Yes,” Maeglin replies. “You may scream at me, if you wish.”

Elwing glances over at him, unpacking the eggs that Maeglin had brought, and the bread too. She says, “I do not scream.”

“You are angry.”

“I have been angry my whole life, Maeglin of the Mole.”

Maeglin inclines his head. This is understandable. “Your life has not been very long.” _To be so full of rage_ , he means, but again. This is understandable. Hers has been…worse than most. It is his fault, though not entirely.

“You are positively a ray of sunshine,” Elwing tells him. She does not say, _you are as bad as I had heard_ , which is a blessing.

Maeglin shrugs. “My life was not very long either,” he says wryly.

Elwing pauses, flummoxed, and tilts her head. She does not blink, he realizes, or if she does, it is rare enough so as to be unnoticeable. It is not mannish, nor elvish; it is very birdlike, and it is very unnerving. “Wasn’t it?” When he doesn’t answer immediately, she says acerbically, “I did not have time to be tutored in history, seeing as I was busy fleeing kinslayers and building a haven for my people.”

“I do not fault you,” Maeglin says mildly. “I was one hundred and ninety.” This is, possibly, a point of shame. He is not sure. If he had been older, would he have given in? If he had been older, would he have been wiser? If he had been older, would they have trusted him more? _If you had been older, would they have loved you_?

Here it is. Love is a hard thing. Love has, always, been a hard thing. Love is fists and cold eyes and steel, and _you must be my finest creation_. Love is small traps, love is warm arms, love is jumping in front of the spear, and love is _you do not need to be_.

 _You always need to be_.

Here it is. There are, really, so many different kinds of love. There is, then, by virtue of the existence of these different kinds of love, a love that is all-consuming. But must it always be romantic? Does that strengthen it, or lessen it? Might it then be almost condescending, to force it into the box and call it romantic?

Maybe it is obsession, or desperation. Or maybe it is simply jealousy. Maybe it was always jealousy. Maybe one does not want to _covet_ , maybe one wants to _be_. Perhaps, possibly, if we are speaking of these many different kinds of love, one watches another’s golden hair, who shines so brightly in the light. Perhaps one thinks of one’s mother, whose warm skin shone so brightly in the light, who never knew one’s mother, when one’s mother shone so brightly in the light. Perhaps one thinks of warm arms, and scars that are not to be hidden, and a high and clear laugh. Perhaps one thinks that these things could have been attainable, once, in a different life, in a different world, and perhaps one feels loss.

Perhaps he feels loss. Perhaps it is an empty, aching, monster, in his chest. Perhaps, this is just another kind of love. Maybe, love and loss are not so different after all. Maybe, this loss is not jealousy. Maybe it is just sadness.

But that does not really matter, in the face of what the histories will say, does it?

“Stop that,” Elwing says crossly. “If we are to be having a conversation, you ought to be present. Did you never learn manners?”

“Did you?” Maeglin asks, before he can stop it. He winces. He should be better spoken. (He never learned how to be better spoken.) “I apologize. That was…impolite.”

Elwing tilts her head again. She cannot, it seems, decide whether to be offended or amused. She settles somewhere in between and then says, “Get out of my house.”

Maeglin does.

* * *

Their paths do not cross again for at least a fortnight. When they do, surprisingly, it is Elwing who seeks him out.

He opens his door to a fierce knocking. He is tired, and the sunshine only saps more strength from him. He was raised in the cool darkness, was raised in the long shadows, and that what may be bright warmth to one will only just be blinding to another. Thus he is left weary and in pain when he opens the door, and he is fully unprepared for the wrath of Elwing the White.

“Where does my mother-in-law live?” She demands.

“I do not know,” Maeglin tells her. “I have not talked to your – mother-in-law, in quite a while. I knew she had arrived, but – ”

“You’re a coward,” Elwing accuses.

Maeglin inclines his head. This is not untrue.

“You must at least know an address,” Elwing tries.

Maeglin does know an address, not that he has ever done anything with it. He knows, maybe, where all his family are, his mother included. But he does not think he should seek them out, and in any case neither have they, though he knows not if they are aware he has been reborn. He asks, “Why?”

Elwing purses her lips. She doesn’t say anything.

Maeglin frowns at her. “Elwing?”

“Well,” Elwing replies, “there are some grievances, you see…”

“I am not giving you my cousin’s address so that you may yell at her.”

“Oh, like you have not done the same?”

“No, I have not.”

Elwing seems stymied by this. “Really,” she says.

“I do not seek out conflict,” Maeglin tells her. “I was raised to avoid it, as best I could.”

“Well,” Elwing says, and then stops. “Well,” she says again, “I…” She shifts, and the way she brushes out her skirts very much gives off the impression of ruffled feathers. “Eönwë visits some nights, you know, and my husband, of course, has been once or twice by, but the evenings are very quiet. I am not used to it.”

Maeglin blinks at her. He does not know what to tell her.

“You ought to come have dinner sometime,” Elwing finally snaps out.

“Ah,” Maeglin says, taken aback. This had not been, in the least, what he had expected her to say. “Thank you for your invitation.”

Elwing nods once then. “Come by tonight,” she says. “Bring bread and conversation, and perhaps I can yet weasel my mother-in-law’s whereabouts from you.” She turns around, and then she is gone.

Maeglin blinks, and then promptly goes inside and tries not to panic.

He is not exactly starved for social interaction, having never been fond of it in his first life, and certainly undeserving of it in this new one. He does not think that she is either, really, since as far as he knows she was raised in a refugee settlement amongst the waves and the gulls, silence a far greater weapon than the loudness of existence. But he wonders what she left behind, and what she is perhaps avoiding, and so when he goes to her house, his bones aching and his scars particularly inflamed, he asks as soon as he opens the door, “What quarrel have you with Idril Celebrindal?”

“Well, come in first, why won’t you,” Elwing says crossly. She is still wearing those Noldor dresses, still looking small in them. “And sit down, for Eru’s sake.”

Maeglin does so. For a moment, she reminds him ever so fiercely of his mother, and he misses her with the fire of a thousand dying suns. But he will not seek her out. He does not deserve to.

It does not escape his notice that Elwing does not answer his question. She is, after all, part elf. She puts the bread on the table, heavy with food, and wipes her floury hands on her dress, uncaring of the fine material. “We have good fish,” she tells him. “I had a visit from Queen Eärwen earlier, you see, so we are well looked after.”

“Alright,” Maeglin replies.

She moves around the kitchen, her hands constantly in motion. The sky is grey again as the gloaming hour falls upon them. The windows are open, though, and the cries from white gulls that gather outside come floating in. There is something beautiful about them, Maeglin thinks, and pulls himself upward, shuffling awkwardly towards the wide open window and hoping his leg does not give out on him.

“They are just beggars,” Elwing says. “They chatter and gossip, but they stay only for a taste of fresh bread.” One of them lands on the windowsill, startling Maeglin, and Elwing laughs – harsh and shrieking. “Oh, that was not kind,” she calls. “Begone, you fools. This meal is not for you.”

The gull screams at Maeglin, then leaps away, soaring far down towards the slate-grey ocean. The moist air drifts in, and Maeglin leans hard against the window, looking out towards the wall of fog moving in over the sea. He watches the birds wheel through the air, coasting on the wind, and he finds himself wishing, for a moment, that he could fly too.

“Is the story true, then?” He asks.

Elwing wipes her hand again, and joins him by the window. She leans even farther out than he, unnoticing or perhaps uncaring of the threat of the fall. A smile quirks about her lips, the breeze blowing back her hair, and she does not look so different from the birds in the sky. “All stories are true in a way, aren’t they?”

“In a way,” Maeglin says.

“Well,” Elwing tells him. “Then yes. It is true.”

“Ah,” Maeglin says quietly. “I see.”

Would he wish for wings? Would he wish to fly away? He thinks the answer is no. He thinks he would not. But he thinks, for a moment, that to view the hollow sky and the earth below, to find himself inside a storm or ever-closer to the stars – that would be beautiful. Yet all the same, to seek beauty was not enough to cover one’s own ugliness.

“Sit,” Elwing says, and offers him her arm back to the table. There they are quiet, Elwing with one ear cocked and eyes far away as the gulls call to each other outside. “And you?” She asks abruptly, as he is biting into the fish.

“And I what?” He asks, after swallowing.

“Is your story true?”

Maeglin puts down the bread. “There are many stories about me,” he says. “Some of them are true.”

“And of Idril?” Elwing’s face is – strange. He had never quite realized just how strange her face is. Her eyes, too, are queer. He wonders, suddenly, how he had never realized that she did not have the whites that all folks did, just the yawning black pupil and the terrible greyness around them. “Did you love her?”

He thinks she will judge him, for what he may say. He thinks she has already been judging him, for quite a while. But Maeglin supposes she can judge him no more harshly than the Just Vala himself, who saw fit to return him to life, saw that he would perhaps never atone for his mistakes and so that it was not worth it to try. “I think,” he says, “it was not love. But it is easier, if it was love. It is a better story, a better song, if it was love.”

Elwing looks at him hard. She says, “Are not the stories so that we do not forget the sins of our forefathers?”

“Yes.”

“Then mustn’t we tell the truth?”

“History is very rarely the truth as it is in its honesty,” Maeglin tells her. “History is written by the victors. This may come as a shock, but we have never, really, been the victors. There is no victor in a house divided. There is only the one who survives to write the song.”

“Yes, yes,” Elwing says, with some of that mannish impatience, that tone that comes from saying: _my life is short, and I will make the most of my precious years, and yes, I spit in your face._ “Our family has torn the skies and earth asunder and we will forever be paying for our mistakes. But if we do not tell a story honestly, we spend an eternity never learning how to understand them, and why they did what they did. We spend an eternity never learning how to forgive our forefathers, and we waste an eternity never learning how to forgive ourselves.”

Maeglin looks down. He does not say that this is, indeed, the point.

“Did I not request good conversation?” Elwing asks.

Maeglin feels the corner of his mouth twitch. “You did,” he acknowledges, and picks back up the bread. “Is there a scarcity of good conversation to be found, here?” There is a joke, in there; not only is there a scarcity of good conversation, but there is a scarcity of anything at all.

“Eönwë has become a friend,” she says, “and brings with him much news of my kin. There is a war looming, Maeglin, and I appreciate his visits, but the tales he brings are never good.”

“Ah,” Maeglin responds. He dips the bread in the stew. It is still warm, and it spreads through his chest and into his weary bones. “I am sorry, then, to hear that.”

“Pfft,” Elwing replies.

“And your husband?” Maeglin inquires politely. He does not know much of Idril and Tuor’s son, and he would prefer not to. It is hard to think about the boy who he dangled from the parapets in his desperation.

Of all the loathsome things he has done, he thinks that one the worst.

Elwing sighs. “He is a star,” she says softly, as if that is all there is to it. Perhaps there is. “What does that make me?”

Maeglin glances around them. He shrugs. “He is still a sailor, is he not? You are the light that draws him home.”

Elwing glances up at him, narrows her eyes. “You are far more silver-tongued than I had thought,” she accuses.

Maeglin frowns, but Elwing laughs, and so Maeglin does not think this is an insult. “In any case,” he says, “it is true. Perhaps a guiding light is not the worst thing in these dark days.”

Elwing picks at her food. “I suppose.”

Maeglin, admittedly, has no clue where this conversation is going.

“He did not want to be,” Elwing tells him, bluntly and sadly. “But I asked that he did. And now he is paying for it.”

Maeglin blinks at her, unhappy and alone and looking as if she’d like to fly away the same as all her birds. “Why?”

“Why what? Why did I ask that he choose the path of immortality?”

Maeglin nods, worried that if he speaks it will ruin the illusion, that she will realize whom she is conversing with and remember why she should not.

“We survived,” Elwing finally says. “And as I am sure you know, the thing about survival is that it firmly makes you want to keep surviving.”

Maeglin cannot say he knows this.

Elwing barrels on. “And I would like to think that we will meet our sons again, one day.” In her face is something hauntingly lost, and Maeglin thinks then that perhaps he is not the only one who has regrets.

“I’m sorry,” Maeglin says.

“I do not want your pity,” she replies.

“It is not pity,” Maeglin tells her honestly. “I know what it is to leave behind a legacy that is not what you would have wanted.”

She looks at him. “I suppose you do,” she finally says. This is as close as a jab as she has gotten, surprisingly. “Bah! Love.”

 _Love,_ Elwing means, _is not synonymous with forgiveness._

“Love,” Maeglin agrees.

 _Love,_ Maeglin means, _hurts every day, every time, in different ways._

Elwing toasts him with her bread. She says, “You are not as bad as I had heard.”

“I am,” Maeglin tells her, his voice ashen with shame. “I do not deserve forgiveness from any, for I did what I did with what I was given. I am sorry for it now, but in the time…Elwing, I nearly threw your husband to a burning death. I valued my own life over others. I was a coward.” 

“Ah,” Elwing says. “But that is the important part. You did what you did with the choices you were given, Maeglin. In the right light, all of us are villains.”

The refugee princess, she was called. The girl queen. Maeglin knows her story – of the Silmaril and the holiness, of the people she raised amongst the tide pools and the swirling surf. That the kinslayers came and massacred, that she left with them her sons and fled. “I suppose,” he hedges. “But Elwing, my story may not be that which was remembered, but it is no less terrible.” This, he knows, is a truth.

"Maeglin,” she says, and fiddles with her hands. Her plate is clean. She eats every last morsel like she will never have it again. “Maeglin, I am always angry. I am always angry, because I have had a hard life. Yet in all the stories – the ones who are angry are not the ones who are the heroes. You, Maeglin, were always angry, from that which Idril has told.”

Maeglin inclines his head. He was, often. He is not, now. He will not fuel the rage, now, for this world is his penance.

Elwing gets up to close the window as the raindrops begin to batter against it, a force unto themselves. But for a moment she simply stands, silhouetted against the clouds. A girl made of the harshness of the crashing sea, a girl made of the bite of the western wind. “I think the Eldar get it all wrong, you see,” Elwing says. “Anger is just another thing to feel, in its fire and its sharpness, and though it burns quickly among men I believe it to be dangerous differently in its long fuse amongst the Eldar, you who hide it deep down. And we must learn to forgive ourselves for it, Maeglin. If we stay stuck in our shame, we never learn from it.”

Maeglin blinks at her, and wonders if this isolation is as much penance for her as it is for him. Wonders, then, how different they two are after all. The hatred deep within picks at it, picks at him, but he can smell the brine of the sea and the freshness of the rain, and he hauls himself to his feet to stand beside her. Thinks about what she has said, and wonders if possibly he could not have recovered in the Halls of Mandos. He wonders if, possibly, the only thing that is truly his penance, is this.

To face the truth.

“Maeglin,” Elwing says quietly, her face tilted up to the rain. It is spattering on the floor and on her beautiful dress, but she seems not to care. “You flinch every time I say that.”

“Elwing,” Maeglin returns, leaning heavily on the windowsill, feeling all his old hurts in the sharpest places. “You should not hide yourself.”

The wind buffets them, throwing sheets of rain. Lightning arcs across the sky, thunder rumbles, and still the gulls drift on currents of air, high above the savage sea.

“Well,” Elwing says, and shuts the window and locks it. She wipes her hands on her dress, rain and flour and oil on the fine Noldorin fabrics. She says, “That is that, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> this may not be quite where i want it, but i am proud of it - also woohoo, cat is finally back on ao3 day! comments and kudos are the best and would be much appreciated, and now i have to go write an essay about the great gatsby ahaha


End file.
